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Vice President for Research

Prof. Dr. Edwin Constable

Professor Edwin (Ed) Constable has been involved in supramolecular chemistry since its inception and has published over 500 research papers and many books. He studied chemistry at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, completing his Part II with Dr. Morrin Acheson studying acridine intercalators. His doctoral studies were also in Oxford, where he worked with Professor Ken Seddon on the design of metal complexes for solar cells. He then moved to Cambridge where he held sequentially an 1851 research fellowship, a university demonstratorship and lectureship and was a fellow of Darwin and Robinson colleges. In 1993 he accepted a call to the Chair of Inorganic Chemistry in Basel where he remained until 2000 when he returned to the United Kingdom to a Chair of Chemistry in Birmingham.

In 2002 he returned to a Chair of Chemistry in Basel. He was Research Dean of the Faculty of Sciences until 2011 when he was appointed Vice Rector for Research. Although his interests and expertise lie in metallosupramolecular and materials chemistry, especially in the use of metal ions for the assembly of novel architectures incorporating specific electronic or photophysical properties, he has a broad interest in multidisciplinary research cutting across conventional boundaries.

He received an ERC Advanced Grant (2011–2016) for his project LiLo (Light-In, Light-Out) relating to sustainable materials chemistry and is actively involved in the Swiss Nanoscience Institute. He runs the research group jointly with his wife, Professor Catherine Housecroft. He recently received the 2011 Sustainable Energy Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry.